Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2013-014225 (referred to as “Patent Document 1” hereinafter) discloses a vehicle collision alarm device that issues an alarm upon there being a probability of a collision between the host vehicle and a preceding vehicle. In the disclosed vehicle collision alarm device, an accelerator pedal operation causes a timing of issuing the alarm to be earlier.
A configuration disclosed in Patent Document 1 merely varies the timing of the alarm according to the presence or absence of the accelerator pedal operation, thus there is room left for an improvement in terms of reducing unnecessary alarm output events while outputting a necessary alarm earlier. For example, according to the configuration disclosed in Patent Document 1, when an accelerator pedal releasing operation is performed, the timing of the alarm is always delayed with respect to the timing before the accelerator pedal releasing operation event. The accelerator pedal releasing operation does not always involve a brake operation immediately after the accelerator pedal releasing operation, and there may be an accelerator pedal releasing operation that does not involve the brake operation immediately after the accelerator pedal releasing operation. Thus, it is not preferable to always delay timing of the alarm with respect to the accelerator pedal releasing operations performed in a variety of travel scenarios. This holds true not only for the alarm control but also for other controls that reduce the probability of the collision, such as an automatic brake control.
It is found that, when the accelerator pedal releasing operation is performed in a situation where a forward obstacle exists, the probability of the brake operation being performed immediately after the accelerator pedal releasing operation event can be determined with high accuracy based on a distance between the host vehicle and the forward obstacle at that time.
Therefore, an object of preferred embodiments is to provide a control apparatus for a vehicle, wherein the control apparatus can delay, when an accelerator pedal releasing operation is performed under a situation where a forward obstacle exists, a timing of executing a predetermined control that reduces a probability of the collision between the forward obstacle and a host vehicle based on a distance between the host vehicle and the forward obstacle at that time.